Leslie Parrilla

Reporter

Recent articles

Immigration

When he was in college, nearly a decade ago, Javier Hernandez did not feel as though he belonged.Even though he had paid to be there, he was afraid.Because he was not a citizen.And fearing deportation, he and his friends referred to themselves in code.“We said, ‘We’ll call ourselves AB 540 students, so the other students will know what we’re talking about,” Hernandez said of classmates at Mt. San Antonio College in 2008.

Benefits for illegal immigrants

A month after the rollout of California’s massive effort to issue driver’s licenses to 1.5 million undocumented immigrants, nearly 40,000 licenses have been issued statewide, with a new Granada Hills processing center averaging more than a thousand a day.Still, many applicants report a mixed bag of experiences.Local advocacy groups are scrambling to address overflowing driver’s license preparation classes. Some test-takers are showing up at the Department...

Parades

A lofty idea percolated to the top of Rashpal Singh Dhindsa’s mind eight years ago, possibly naively, as with any other red-blooded American.“I thought Rose Parade is good to tell people who we are. I don’t know of any other parade. Where we gonna go to tell everybody who we are? We just try what we know,” said Dhindsa, a Fontana resident and member of the Sikh religious community.And so he did.That thinking led Dhindsa and fellow Sikhs to...

Drought

Salvador Munoz has dripped 35 years of sweat onto West Los Angeles lawns, rising with the searing California sun to haul heavy leaf-blowers and push bulky lawnmowers 12 hours a day until dark.“I’m old, but I can’t survive without working,” said 72-year-old Munoz. whose skin had no wrinkles when he started as a gardener decades ago. The profession was easier then, and worth it.But it’s likely to get more difficult, experts say. The industry of...

Disease outbreaks

When a passenger riding a Los Angeles bus stood up, tore off a surgical mask, and yelled, “Don’t mess with me. I have Ebola,” prompting public pandemonium and hospitalizing the driver, legal minds began wondering what laws they could use to arrestthe man.What they discovered was an absence of infectious disease-related laws that left them looking for authority and debating how to hold Ebola pranksters accountable. The next day, they shrugged off a copycat prank.

Terrorist attacks

With each new year fresh sets of eyes line the seats of history teacher Aaron Bishop’s 10th- and 11th-grade classes in Rancho Cucamonga, bringing with them more detachment from the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Like his students, the history of the tragedy itself is growing up, through history books detailing its political, social and cultural ramifications, creating a challenge for educators to connect with generations that never felt the trauma of that day 13 years...